Has anyone else looked at this announcement by BT and ended up none the wiser as to whether their broadband is going to be upgraded or not? https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.p...lo-unlimited-5g-and-fixed-broadband-plan.html Seems positive regarding upgrading copper customers but I think it's only applicable if you could already get fibre but jsut haven't bothered yet (or have I read that wrong!)
The upgrade is only applicable if you are on the old ADSL-in-the-technical-sense plans (we colloquially use ADSL to mean any broadband over a phone line, but generally we're actually using VDSL or similar). i.e. unless you're on an ancient contract and get 17mpbs down or less (ADSL Max / 2+ / Annex M), then you're already on a 'superfast' broadband link and will not see an upgrade. 'FTTC' is 'Fibre to the Cabinet' with the link to your home still being copper. Since damn near every cabinet in the country is connected to the backbone via fibre this is more a removal of a arbitrary speedcap rather than any new line hardware. Thimk that's confusing that something with "fibre" in the name doesn't actually get fibre to your house? Blame the ASA for capitulating to Virgin Media's lobbying and allowing advertising of 'fibre broadband' for products that only have a fibre link somewhere at some point in the ISP network.
So if I get 5.5mbps down with no option for fibre does that mean it's old ADSL or not old ADSL??? No FTTC available here but I suppose that's my fault for moving 2 miles out of town!
It's either an old ADSL connection, or the line between you and the cabinet is in such a poor state that it cannot handle a faster rate. VM's 'fibre' broadband is coax to the neighbourhood (same cable shared between ~50 premises with multiple taps), which only connects to a fibre link in the nearest cabinet. Standard DOCSIS setup, no fibre is run to individual premesis.
While true for most of their network, there is however an initiative within Virgin Media to roll out FTTP as well. Source: https://www.virginmedia.com/corpora...-announces-largest-uk-fibre-broadband-rollout Outside those project areas everything will be coax to the cabinet with DOCSIS3 as you say though.
All over COAX. DOCSIS 3 can get over a gigabit, and DOCSIS 3.1 ups that to 10gig. The problem is that that link is shared between everyone on the same ring, which is why VM bandwidth is so variable throughout the day. When nobody else is using it, you can have that 500mbit slice of the 1gig pie no problem. If 50 people are all on that link, they all need to cram into the same 1gig link and your personal speed tanks.
I got mine. Same price. I was annoyed to find that the person who transferred my account to my new address was wrong and I could have had fibre in March. Copper sucks.
There is....... One method is using Ubiquiti USGs to perform this function for you at user-definable intervals. I have mine running every 30 mins and it's built up enough data over the last year to show me that I'm getting more than what I pay for >95% of the time so in my case, I can't complain.
Chill Winston. There's nobody victimising you here so you can stop playing the victim. Back on topic. I really don't get the hangup on the physical medium - though the manner in which some ISPs choose to market it is questionable. What does it matter if your internet comes through fibre, coax, phone lines or a wet piece of string if it gets the advertised speed? Even fibre can have contention, certainly PONs, and even point-to-point is going to be over-subscribed somewhere
The old copper wires simply aren't fit for purpose in this day and age. If cat hair was a suitable material no one would be crying out for FTTP...
The old copper wires are pretty good, really. It's the slightly newer aluminium wires that are the problem...
from an infrastructure point of view, clearly investment is needed. But as an end user, who cares? I know people that have 30Mbit "full fibre". I also know people that have 300Mbit cable, and people that have 70Mbit "fake fibre" FTTC. The copper megabits spend just as well as the fibre ones. So long as the customer is properly informed about expected average and minimum speeds, it shouldn't matter. Marketing the medium is just another way for ISPs to over-sell. the old adage of what you want isn't a hammer and a nail, you want a picture hanging on the wall.
The complains about copper twisted-pair is that as every new go-faster technique is implemented, the distance at which it works from the exchange gets shorter and shorted. e.g. G-fast is ~100m for the maximum advertised speeds dropping to 1/10 that at 500m, and that's total link length not as-the-crow-flies distance from the exchange. By replacing the last-mile link with fibre even with no change in link rate you now have the capability to upgrade for another few decades. Copper no longer has that capacity for the majority of households. /
Personally I think for the majority of people 20-30Mbit is fine. Basically that is the point where speed stops negatively affecting typical daily usage (live loading and streaming, as opposed to downloading). I think bringing the all too common areas where only sub-8Mbit speeds are available up to scratch should be the focus of most of the investment. Then after that start fully modernising.
Virgin Media use 10GB as a standard to the cabinets etc these days. The UBR in the cabinet will have multiple uplinks back also. I think the official contention ratio they quote is 1:12 if they still quote one. ADSL used to be 1:50 residential and 1:20 business for comparison.
So no further information forthcoming for any sort of superfast rollout in my area. Connecting Devon and Somerset have gone from "Q2 2019" to "Unfortunately, at the moment there are no private plans to connect your property to superfast broadband, and our funding won't stretch to fill the gap just yet, but we're working on it. We're pursuing other funding options and solutions to support homes and businesses which cannot yet access superfast broadband." Also BT are in no way forthcoming on how they intend to service the USO in my area or their own plans to get rid of copper! So I'm in a quandary right now as to whether it's worth upgrading my 4g router to see if I can improve on the current one or should I wait and see if BT or CDS come up with anything any longer! I wonder if BT might shift us onto 4g in the near future which might make upgrading my router a bit redundant. Has anyone seen I haven't about BTs plans or can anyone suggest whether changing routers is likely to make a difference anyway?
